My two kids are in elementary and attend a public school. The public schools here are OK - good for California which probably means they are middle-of-the-road for the US. We happen to live in a part of town where most people are highly educated or rich or both (strangely enough, those two do not seem to overlap all that much. We fall under the highly educated and not rich category), so the students are good, there is lots of parent involvement, and the PTA has tons of money to spend on art lessons, field trips and other extras.
I don’t think the cost of private school here gets us much bang for the buck over the public schools for K-8. I will consider putting them in a private school for high school, though.
As a parent I’m very happy that the idea of the failure case for my kids is cop or teacher. To me that means that they haven’t failed. In my high school we had kids using drugs but generally it was weed or adaral the school across the street had a meth problem sure you don’t want your kids getting into any of that but again if your failure case is weed you’re better off then if its meth.
Personally for me private school is for high school and maybe junior high. It’s one thing to be realize that not all people are going to succeed its another to be temped to be one of them since their lives look more fun and rewarding then yours dose while you’re going through all of the high school drama.
I don’t have kids, so answering this question is more of an exercise in hypotheticals.
First point: No child of mine will ever see the inside of a public school, not ever. Regardless of how much money I have or don’t have. It. Will. Not. Happen.
Because of where I live (40 miles from nowhere), even if I could afford private school, it wouldn’t be an option, for two reasons. 1) It would be a terribly long commute; 2) Any private school around here is likely to be of the “The Earth was created by Jesus and is 6,000 years old” variety.
IF I lived in a city where there were other private school options (think: Montessori or nonreligious private school) and IF I could afford it, I would still probably favor homeschooling over a formalized school setting.
I remain of the belief that I can do a far better job of educating my children than a group of strangers.
Public school here. I think anything else is undemocratic. Honestly, if I were in charge, there wouldn’t be an option. Of course, there are reasons I’m not in charge. Also, I live in an area with very good public schools, so this is a purely theoretical for me.
Anyway, I think that having a geographical community that is tied together by shared schooling of children is a good thing. I like that my kids know all of the neighborhood kids because they all ride the bus together and go to class together and play outside together. I like that I know all the neighborhood parents from seeing them in the neighborhood and at school functions, and so we have a well-established network to deal with problems in the neighborhood or at school.
I picked the last option that I’d use public schools even if I could afford private, thought it might actually depend on just how much money I had.
I have several tax clients making well into the six figures (150-300k) who private school their kids. While they technically can afford to do this, some are literally spending half of their after-tax income to make it happen. (4 kids x 15,000 a year as one example.)
To me, that’s just crazy. I’d rather put that money aside for college. Or just buy the kids their first house.
However, if I was unbelievably rich, like making millions, I might well consider private school a good option. At that point, I might be worried about a need for extra security as much as I’d be concerned about education.
Our local high school sucks. We put each of our kids in private school after their first year at the public high school. It was financially tough at the time but well worth it. There’s no generalization to be made though, some schools are better than others.
One of the public high schools in my town is one of the best schools in California. Large numbers of kids take AP classes. Large numbers of kids get admitted to Stanford, Cal, and other great schools. The only problem there is that the kids are too academically competitive. And you think you could do a better job than this school why? I trust that you are independently wealthy and don’t have to work while home schooling your kid. And that you know all the subjects the kid would have to take and how to teach them most effectively.
But thanks for providing an excellent example of the irrational hatred of public schools I referred to.
Nobody “told me.” I live in smalltown Mississippi, and I am aware of the history of the place where I live. Pretty much all of the private school options around here, with the exception of a single Catholic school that does seem to be fairly racially integrated, are so-called “Christian academies” that were founded in the 1960s by white parents who refused to send their children to public schools after desegregation. That is their entire purpose for existing. They are still overwhelmingly white, even today.
I might consider the Catholic school if my hypothetical kid were really, really miserable at the public school, but not otherwise, since 1) it’s not something I could really afford; and 2) I’d be worried about the kinds of things my kid might be taught at a religiously affiliated school in this part of the country (let’s just say, I don’t think we’re talking about a place steeped in the Jesuit intellectual tradition or anything; if it WERE, I’d seriously consider it).
I went to Catholic schools, and so did my brothers. So, if anything, I’m biased in favor of private schools.
I have enough money to send my son to private schools, and I did so for a while… but he has major ADHD, and private schools just didn’t have the staff or the resources to help him succeed.
As it turns out, our neighborhood public school was the best place for him all along, and he’s been going there since 2nd grade.
Private education is anti-democratic and only helps perpetuate the accumulation of dynastic wealth by those who can afford to buy their children a better future than the plebs are allowed to have.
Many good and valid points posted here. We were selective in our neighborhood when we moved here before the kids started school. The schools are very good here, and that is a reason for how expensive homes are. I have to laugh at those parents around here who insist on sending their kids to private schools - they are no better, but much more expensive. I can only theorize these parents have objections to public school curricula, and don’t want their wittew snowfwake exposed to ideas found in the big, bad world, or they are religious, or want the prestige.
When standardized testing comes around I tell my kids to eat a good breakfast and do well, as our home values depend on it!
I voted can afford private, but send my kids to public. However, if we happened to live in an area with a not-so good school district, then I would definitely consider private.
My only children are hypothetical children, but I grew up in two widely separated towns that were not noted for private schools being a big thing: Valdosta GA and Los Alamos NM.
In the absence of them (private schools, or at least private schools as a big thing), the public school system seemed to have pretty decent academic standards in place. So if I lived in an area where public schools were the main flavor of schools that folks sent their kids to, I’d happily make use of them myself; and if I didn’t live in such an area, I might have to think about moving to one.
I now live in a locale (Nassau County Long Island NY) where funding for public schools is provided by local (“town”, by which they mean a political division one tier below a county… essentially a subcounty) taxes which in turn are based on the value of your home. That means that the schools that the wealthy families send their kids to are supported by taxes on the wealthy folks’ homes; the schools in “towns” where families tend to be poor must make do on taxes on the poor folks’ homes. Admittedly, the tax rate, as a percentage of the worth of one’s homes, could be set substantially higher in the poorer towns, but overall it strikes me as an unfortunate mechanism for providing for education.
I haven’t been a grade school kid in awhile and I wasn’t paying taxes when I was, but I’m under the impression that Georgia and New Mexico tax the residents of their state and then distribute the money to schools on a per capita basis. That’s not perfect (due to poor states and wealthy states) but it seems less unfair to the kids than the property-based per-town tax system.
At any rate, this area is definitely one in which private schools are all over the place and public schools generically regarded as inferior to them, which may or may not be related to the funding problem.
The poll compares classes not individual schools. That’s a recipe for bad decision making based on stereotypes or averages that don’t apply in your area.
I spent 12 years in Catholic school- everything after kindergarten. If I’d gone to the public schools for my area it wouldn’t have much more economically diverse. High school, by drawing on the entire metro area, gave me a wider range of people. My high school was also less cliquish than my area public HS. Some of that probably had to do with being all male so the romantic aspect of the social interactions got pushed outside of normal school hours. One of the clothing norms was finding and buying horrifically wide and ugly ties at second hand stores to meet the requirements of the dress code. The high school I would have gone to, and my neighbor and friend growing up did go to, was far more superficial and classist in clothing norms.
As an agnostic now that was raised Catholic I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on the religion classes either. I had classes in world religions (that were NOT of the “look how wrong” they are) that opened up my mind to people of other backgrounds. With Catholicism being contextualist in interpretation of the Bible those classes, especially by high school, covered a lot of the context. Religions classes effectively had a strong component of exploring the context of Middle Eastern and to a less degree European historical cultural development. Sure they provided the official RC doctrinal interpretation but along the way they were classes in non-American culture.
I’d encourage taking a good hard look at the schools available. Any given school may be better or worse. Even if they are all similar a particular mix of strengths and weaknesses may be a better fit.
On private schools - Actually my sons is more diverse in some ways than the public school because we attract kids from both sides of the state line (Kansas-Missouri) as well as draw kids from as far as 30 miles away in all directions. The local public schools only draw from a specific area.
As for religion, yes its Christian but it’s from 90 different churches.
I could have stretched and sent my kids to private schools and they would have qualified for partial scholarships. But both my wife and I went through public schools and did quite well. I went to one of the best public HSs in the country, while she went to a basically mediocre semi-rural school in a small town. She got partial scholarships to college while I worked my way through, except for a half scholarship/hald loan that I got for my fourth year.
All three of my kids went through the public school system here (technically, the Protestant school system, but it was non-sectarian and no religion was taught). All of my grandchildren are also in public schools, including those of my son who could easily have afforded private schools (he is a “Microsoft millionaire”) but still chose public schools.